I’m on my way to Winter Fantasy in Fort Wayne, Indiana! What is that, you ask? Why it’s one of the greatest gaming conventions around!

I love enormous gaming conventions. Seeing 60,000 people who all know what a wood elf ranger is gathered in the same place for four days at Gen Con is astounding. It’s an immersion in geekdom like no other. The convention floor is enormous, there’s games in the meeting rooms of every hotel in a six-block radius, and the local dining establishments change the names of food items on their menu to include Drizzt Do’Urden’s name. (I hear his lavender eyes dark chocolate cupcake is delicious.)

If you have a taste for gaming and the means to get to Gen Con or some other large convention, I suggest you do.

That said, small conventions are equally incredible for a different reason. They feel like a relaxing vacation. Big cons have a lot going for them in terms of number of games, stuff to demo/buy, celebrity guests, and variety of experiences, but they’re also a grind. They’re crowded, expensive, sprawling, and a hustle.

If you’re ignoring the small conventions (less than 1,000 people) because you don’t think they’re worth it, I urge you to think again. I get a ton out of Winter Fantasy, AcadeCon, and others.

Cheaper

As many Winter Fantasy veterans say, “Fort Wayne hates money.” Small conventions don’t need enormous city centers, so they happen in smaller towns with convention centers. Every price from badge to food to hotel is cheaper at a smaller convention as a result. You can eat like a king for a day in Fort Wayne for the price of a beer and a burger during Gen Con in Indianapolis.

Easier

With less people competing for events it’s easier to get the games you want, a hotel nearby, and take care of registration issues. Planning for Winter Fantasy is much easier than planning for Gen Con.

Enormous cons take over entire convention centers and the surrounding hotels. Smaller cons generally have one large room in a convention center or a few meeting rooms close together in a hotel. You don’t have to sprint from one event to the next, because at worst your next game is 100 feet away. You can easily get back to your hotel to grab something you forgot or put away leftovers before your next game.

Because no one is rushing and everyone is gathered in the same place, it’s easy to stop someone and ask them for help. With less people, convention organizers and staff handle even the smallest of problems with gusto, making it very easy for you to relax. (Side note: Even small conventions are a TON of work for the organizers and staff, so be kind and grateful for their amazing work!)

More Intimate

It’s easier to make new friends that you play with multiple times over the course of a small convention. Old friends have more time for meet-ups and games. You have time to have actual conversations rather than quick hellos with people. It’s astounding!

Even small cons tend to have amazing special guests like Rob Schwalb, Chris Lindsay, Lysa Chen, Satine Phoenix, Ruty Rutenberg, and/or Shawn Merwin. If you want some good one-on-one time with those people, catch them at a smaller con where their time is a little less constrained. (They’re likely still busy, so don’t hog all their time.) I made a lot of great contacts and friends by attending smaller conventions.

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What would happen if heroes failed and the title villain comes to power in Rise of Tiamat? Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragon’s first storyline, Tyranny of Dragons, is truly epic. It sees the characters clash with multiple chromatic dragons of great power to prevent the rise of their goddess, Tiamat, from the Nine Hells. As with many D&D campaigns, I imagine most of the groups that played through this adventure are victorious… but what about those who were not? What happens in that version of Faerûn?

The end of the adventure offers three inspiring paragraphs about what becomes of the world and how to continue the story if the characters fail to stop the Cult of the Dragon from summoning Tiamat. These three paragraphs got my brain going and inspired me to continue the tale, setting the stage for a campaign set in a Faerûn were dragons reign!

Tiamat Rules

In this new world where Tiamat rules, chromatic dragons hold all the power. A decade after their dragon goddess’ rise, dragons have laid waste to almost the entirety of the surface world and parts of the Underdark with no special treatment for the mortals in the Cult of the Dragon. The cult burned with the rest of the world. The dragons let Faerun run wild and different chromatic dragons rule the regions where they are most comfortable. Mountains, ice, marsh, lava, and more have taken the place of mortal settlements. Here, dragons spend their days hunting, feasting, searching through ruins for treasure, and battling against each other for dominance. It all pleases their goddess, who revels in the chaos the world has created.

Despite the violence of dragons, all still bow to Tiamat. It was under her leardership that most of the world’s metallic dragons and giants were killed or driven into the Underdark. Tiamat keeps her consorts and most loyal subjects close and can assemble an army of dragons at nearly a moment’s notice. Her ultimate goal is to snuff out the few remaining bastions of mortals who stand against her. Tiamat knows these humanoids nearly stopped her rise to power and must snuff out all who defy her.

Desperate Bastions of Mortals

All Faerûn is not lost. While most mortals died in the acids, fires, poisons, snows, and storms of dragons, there are those who survived. Waterdeep stands thanks to Ahghairon’s dragonward, a powerful enchantment that keeps dragons out of the city. Here the Council of Waterdeep still meets to discuss rationing supplies and what to do with all the city’s refugees. Every day in the overcrowded city people starve, disease spreads, and the people threaten to tear themselves apart. The council can barely hold Waterdeep’s walls together, let alone come up with a plan to send Tiamat back to the Nine Hells.

The situation in the Underdark is not much better. Evil humanoids, like drow and duergar, illithids, and criminals like the Xanathar Guild that call the place home were unwelcoming to those brave few who made it into the dark tunnels, slaughtering or enslaving those who entered. Even communities of svirfneblin and myconids sealed their entrances, fearful that dragons were not far behind the surface refugees. Despite all this, there are places within the Underdark where surviving surface humanoids gather and try to take shelter, constantly wary of hunting dragons and other dangers within their new, terrifying home. Many of the communities that survived the last ten years have a metallic dragon or giant leading them, but even these places experience loss more often than not.

A Spark of Hope

The odds against mortals are overwhelming. How could they hope to survive in a world ruled by dragons, let alone fight back? On the tenth anniversary of Tiamat’s rise, hope comes in a strange package. A devil from the Nine Hells appears in Waterdeep, demanding to see the council. The fiend claims to be a messenger of Bel, former lord of Avernus, first layer of the Hells. Bel wants to see Tiamat returned to Avernus and knows of a way to do so… but can the characters trust the disgraced devil prince? His words are the only hopeful ones to be spoken in years…

If you like what you’re reading please follow me on Twitter, like World Builder Blog on Facebook, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!

If you like what you’re reading please follow me on Twitter, like World Builder Blog on Facebook, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!

I’m gearing up for my own con with about 15 other friends where I will introduce them to Mutants and Masterminds. If you’ve never played the game before, I highly recommend it. It’s ridiculously fun! The folks at Green Ronin have created a versatile, explosive system that can be used for big, action-packed set piece encounters, or be used to tell a grittier, lower-powered super tale. There’s just one problem. Making a character takes a long time!

Character Creation in Mutants and Masterminds

When you’re playing an extended game over multiple sessions, a long character creation process isn’t a bad thing. You can make a whole night of it with your players while you build heroes and the world! For a one-shot with new players, I just want to hit the ground running. Especially when we have only a few hours to play before we all rotate tables to play a new game.

Character creation in Mutants and Masterminds takes a while, especially if you’re not used to making a character in a classless system, like many of my friends. In order to create versatile heroes, Green Ronin threw out classes and instead allows 150 points to be spent on abilities, skills, advantages, powers, and equipment during character creation. There are tons of options so you can make exactly the hero you want. Not a bad thing but not great for a one-shot.

Luckily the book comes with ten templates for heroic archetypes. Want to play a Batman-style hero with no superpowers, but great investigative skills, sweet martial arts moves, and awesome equipment? The crime fighter is for you. Want flight, strength, and invulnerability a la Superman? Check out the paragon. Want to cast spells like Dr. Strange? Try the mystic.

This is a great jumping off point, but many of the templates still have choices to make that can take an hour or longer to figure out if you’ve never played the game (looking at you mystic template). The templates could also do a better job finishing some of the math for you and providing DCs and bonuses for abilities.

How I Made the Pregens

The pregens below were formed using the templates in the book. All I did was make decisions where they were required to be made, assigned complications for characters, and did a little bit of the math so a new player can jump right in. Normally I’d want the players to make the decisions for their own characters but with such limited time I’d rather we play than have them make choices in a system they’ve never tried.

The pregens below were chosen based on the heroic archetypes my players wanted to play. I sent them an email listing the archetypes with an example hero and the five they chose were energy controller, mystic, powerhouse, psychic, and speedster.

ARCHETYPE (EXAMPLE HERO)

Battlesuit (Iron Man)

Construct (Cyborg)

Crime Fighter (Batman)

Energy Controller (Human Torch)

Gadgeteer (Gear from Static Shock or Lucius Fox if he used the tech he made)

Martial Artist (Black Widow)

Mimic (Takes the powers of others they can see… this one will require HOMEWORK and is more complicated… like Peter Petrelli from Heroes)

Mystic (Dr. Strange)

Paragon (Superman)

Powerhouse (Thing)

Psychic (Jean Grey)

Shapeshifter (Mystique… but can become other creatures beyond humanoids)

Speedster (Flash)

Warrior (Aquaman, Hercules)

Weapon Master (Hawkeye, Deadpool, Punisher)

Here’s The Pregens!

Pregens for Power Level 10 heroes are below. Feel free to grab them now or head over to the Free Game Resources section of this site and grab them anytime.

If you like what you’re reading please follow me on Twitter, check out my podcasts, find my products on the DMs Guild, tell your friends about the blog, and/or leave me a comment and let me know you think. Thanks!

PARENTAL/TRIGGER WARNING: Just a quick heads up to our listeners, this podcast discusses topics of a sexual harassment, abuse of DM power, and other subjects of an adult nature and may not be appropriate for children.

I sit down with Tracy Hurley, Liz Larsen, and Barak Blackburn to discuss a recent Vice article and the history of sexual and gender harassment in tabletop RPGs. This podcast was recorded on August 6, 2014.